Why so few of us own original art

Most people I meet love the idea of owning original art. Very few actually buy it.

When I ask why, they say it feels intimidating. Galleries are a little snobby. People don't know what things should cost, or how to tell what's worth owning. So they don't buy anything because it's a mysterious world, and so their walls end up full of prints anyone could have.

For 52 weeks I shot analogue film at Allan Gardens Conservatory, one roll a week, and held every roll undeveloped until the whole year was done. These photographs were first shown across three different cafes during May's CONTACT Photography. The full series is now together in one room for the first time, and it took everything I had to photograph, curate and hang it. I now recognize the magnitude of it.

You are not seeing your own face accurately. Almost no one does. There is real research behind why the photo you dislike most is often the one that reads best to everyone else.

The Mirror Is Working Against You

You see your mirror image daily, thousands of times over. The mere exposure effect means repetition builds affection, so you've grown attached to your reversed face without realizing it.

Photographs aren't reversed. They show the face everyone else actually sees.

During a photo shoot yesterday, a client said something to me today that I hadn't really recognized before.

She said, "You're a really good hype woman."

And honestly? She's right. Encouraging people, seeing their potential before they fully see it themselves, wanting them to succeed, that's just how I'm wired.

When you hire a brand photographer you get a lot of things that don't necessarily fall under the heading of photographer. Some photographers do more and some do less. 

Your photo … well your photo tells the story of who you used to be. There’s a disconnect between who you are what you’re aspiring toward and that costs you in so many ways.  Not because it’s a bad photo, necessarily. Because it’s an inaccurate one.

And here’s what that looks like in practice: you share your profile with someone and before you’ve said a word, you’re already apologizing for your photo. Is that really how you want to start a relationship?

It also projects something you probably don’t intend: I know this doesn’t represent me, and I haven’t cared enough to change it.

I’ve worked with founders who have built companies from nothing. Executives who have led teams of hundreds. Creative directors with taste and vision that stops people cold.

What does that actually look like in terms of branding photography and fine art work?

It's complex but simple. Non-resistance looks like equanimity and equanimity is a form of power. Inner stillness is the guide. When you stop feeding a problem, when you withdraw the worry and rumination, space opens up. That's where solutions arrive.

We grip it. We think there's gotta be a way. How am I going to make this work? What if this doesn't work? Why isn't this working? I'm a failure, someone else would have figured this out by now. But if you can ebb and flow into different aspects of your life or work, these things fall away or the solution arises on its own.

Sometimes standing out has nothing to do with getting louder. 

Standing out can be stepping back, slowing down, going inward, getting quiet. It goes against the grain.

After a year of weekly visits to Allan Gardens Conservatory, one of Toronto's most quietly extraordinary places, a jewel amidst the concrete, something shifted. I slowed down how I photographed. It got softer, more reflective. I didn’t plan it that way.

I'd been visiting Allan Gardens Conservatory every week for 52 weeks for this project, and I'd visited before I started and have continued to visit since. Somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like a location and started feeling like a place in which I immersed myself.  It became my muse. 

Why I waited a full year to develop my film On delayed gratification, analogue process, and what uncertainty teaches you

Have you ever done this?

I took photographs for a full year and didn't look at a single one until the year was over.

No previewing, no test rolls, no reassurance. Just fifty-two weeks of going to the same place, photographing with the same film camera, and putting the rolls away in a bag when I got home.

People ask me if I was scared. I was nervous, especially at the beginning. There's a particular kind of anxiety that comes from not knowing. It wasn't a dramatic fear, it was the background noise of whether or not I exposed correctly, is the camera working, what if none of this is usable?

Toronto in January is gray. Heavy and unrelenting.

I started going to Allan Gardens in April, so by the time winter arrived I was already deep into the project. And what I discovered was that the conservatory in winter is something completely different from the conservatory in spring. It's a refuge. You walk in from the cold street and suddenly you're warm, you're surrounded by green, there are flowers. The light comes through the glass roof and softens everything.

We talk a lot about screen time, about digital detox, about being more present. But we rarely talk about what presence actually gives u. And what its absence costs us.

When I started going to Allan Gardens every week with my film camera, I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was just doing a photography project. But somewhere in those 52 weeks, something shifted.

Working with film means you can't scroll through your photos on a digital screen. There's no instant feedback loop, no urge to adjust and reshoot immediately. You make more thoughtful choices about your composition, what attracts your eye because you’ve slowed yourself down. You press the shutter and then you move on.

The ritual, the fear, and why letting go is part of creating

In 2024, I made a decision that went against everything our digital culture tells us to do. I put my digital camera down and used my analogue camera to begin anew.